[nchild] letters to Ian Martin and EU from Italian couples
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[nchild] letters to Ian Martin and EU from Italian couples
Dear Nchilders,
we have changed some parts in the letter that I proposed some days ago, according to all your valuable comments.
In particular the part regarding the processing of the old files.
Since we are not sure at what point the new law is now in the processing and who will have to approve it (parliament? Ministers?), we have changed also the terms of the request.
Please correct any mispelling, if present.
The petition of Patti Arias will be annexed to this letter, in order to show that our first action has been addressed to the Nepalese authorities.
We are planning to submit this letter as soon as possible both to Ian Martin and to the Delegation of the European Commission to Nepal, since we understood from the report done after the meeting in Kathmandu that probably the EU may have better relationships than the US with the Maoists, and thus it can give a big help in our task.
The letter has already been diffused in some Italian forums and we are collecting signatures from Italy, but it is open to anyone who is willing to sign it from any place. I think that signatures coming from EU countries would be particularly useful for the submission to the European Commission.
Also supporters of the initiative, who are not Nepalese adoptive parents, are welcome to sign it. They will be listed in the signatures.
Please be fast to submit your signatures, since we are doing our best to send the letters in a few days.
Thus if you want to sign it, please send an email to
adonepal@...
with subject "adhesion"
copying in the text the following sentence, with your data in place of the boldface part:
"I have read the Letter of Request of support for the resumption of International Adoptions in Nepal to be sent to Ian Martin, Special Representative of the
Secretary-General in Nepal of the United Nations And Head of the United Nations Political Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) and to To Mr. E. Lechuga Jimenez
Delegation of the European Commission to Nepal, and I hereby undersign it
Name
Surname
email
nationality
Please specify if you are a supporter or an adoptive parent. "
Sicerely,
Alessandra
The text follows:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To Mr. Ian Martin
Special Representative of the
Secretary-General in Nepal of the United Nations
And Head of the United Nations Political Mission in Nepal (UNMIN)
To Mr. E. Lechuga Jimenez
Delegation of the European Commission to Nepal
Uttar Dhoka Sadak, Lainchaur
P.O. Box 6754
Kathmandu, Nepal
Subject: Request of support for the resumption of International Adoptions in Nepal
August, 2007
We are a group of the more than 400 families whose files for international adoption in Nepal are at the moment suspended. Many of us have already met their children in Nepal, and we anyway consider them as our sons/daughters since the moment in which they were matched to us. A large number of couples who have already submitted their application for an adoption in Nepal, and are waiting for matching with a child also form part of our group.
The Nepalese government has suspended International Adoptions with the aim of rewriting the present law, because of unfair and obscure procedures that sometimes occur during adoptions in Nepal. The draft of the new law, which should re-establish international adoptions, and be the temporary transit towards a final law on the subject, has been announced many times but has never been approved. The Minister for Children, Women and Social Welfare has still not provided any indication on the content and expected time of approval of the law, and has not given precise indications on the way and time by which the pending files will be processed, which anyway seems to be postponed to the approval of the new terms and conditions.
We feel abandoned and powerless in front of this situation, because of the present absence of news and the lack of a relevant representation in Nepal which may help defend the rights of the more than 400 children already matched and of all their waiting families. We deeply regret that the weakest subjects, that is the children, are obliged to continue to suffer, asking themselves why their adoptive parents do not come to take them away.
However, basic concepts of fairness and due process would be violated if the over 400 pending adoptions were now, at this late stage in the adoption process, subjected to substantially new legal requirements. Furthermore, concerns about the legitimacy of the orphan status of children in regard to any particular pending files can be fully investigated and resolved under the existing legal framework.
Thus we, the undersigned, ask You to consider our request for support, and to intervene with the Nepalese authorities in order to allow the implementation, with a fair processing, of the adoptive procedures already submitted, in due time before elections, and the restarting of International Adoptions in general.
We ask this in particular for the sake of many children which find themselves in poor sanitary and logistic conditions.
A petition with similar requests has already been submitted to the Nepalese Minister for Children, Women and Social Welfare (see Annex 1).
Waiting for a prompt reply,
best regards,
…. Signatures…
Annex 1: Petition to the Minister and Acting Secretary of the Nepali Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare
The Nepali Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare’s current suspension of adoptions in Nepal causes serious negative consequences for both the children and the parents involved in over 440 adoptions that are currently pending in Nepal. These pending adoptions are ones in which the adoptive parents have already been matched with and in many cases have met and formed emotional bonds with their adoptive children.
No new adoptions have been processed or approved in Nepal in about six months and the Ministry has not announced a definite time by which processing of adoptions will be resumed. During this increasingly protracted period of delay, the children continue to live in orphanages, often under inadequate conditions. Developmental and health problems are common among children in orphanages and those problems have been shown to increase with each month of institutional care.
The adoptive parents, too, are harmed by this protracted delay. Many have already spent months and years in their adoption processes, have followed all the existing laws, and are now anguished to have their adoptions put on hold for an indeterminate period.
The suspension of adoptions in Nepal also further burdens the strained governmental and non-governmental social services for children in Nepal. There are tens of thousands of children already living in Nepal’s orphanages. Other children are less fortunate and live as street children, without even the basic care and protection usually provided by orphanages. While the suspension of the adoptions continues, more children are orphaned in Nepal every day due to pervasive conditions of poverty. The suspension denies these children and those already in the orphanage system the opportunity of being adopted by loving families.
The Ministry’s goal to reform adoption laws in Nepal is laudable. It is important that adoption laws in Nepal foster transparency, high standards, and full accountability in order to protect the important rights of the children, birth parents, adoptive parents, and all stakeholders. However, basic concepts of fairness and due process would be violated if the over 440 pending adoptions were now, at this late stage in the adoption process, subjected to substantially new legal requirements. Furthermore, concerns about the legitimacy of the orphan status of children in regard to any particular pending files can be fully investigated and resolved under the existing legal framework.
The timing for the Ministry to end the current suspension of adoptions must be immediate if the adoptions are to be finalized before 2008. In October and November, the Nepali festivals of Dashain and Tijar, as well as the planned national elections in Nepal, will surely slow, if not halt, normal administrative processes. Therefore, if the pending adoptions are not allowed to be processed and completed in advance of these events, even more significant delays and the consequent harms of those delays can be expected.
Given the harms engendered by this protracted delay, we, the undersigned, respectfully request that the Ministry resume the processing of the pending adoptions by no later than August 15, 2007.
we have changed some parts in the letter that I proposed some days ago, according to all your valuable comments.
In particular the part regarding the processing of the old files.
Since we are not sure at what point the new law is now in the processing and who will have to approve it (parliament? Ministers?), we have changed also the terms of the request.
Please correct any mispelling, if present.
The petition of Patti Arias will be annexed to this letter, in order to show that our first action has been addressed to the Nepalese authorities.
We are planning to submit this letter as soon as possible both to Ian Martin and to the Delegation of the European Commission to Nepal, since we understood from the report done after the meeting in Kathmandu that probably the EU may have better relationships than the US with the Maoists, and thus it can give a big help in our task.
The letter has already been diffused in some Italian forums and we are collecting signatures from Italy, but it is open to anyone who is willing to sign it from any place. I think that signatures coming from EU countries would be particularly useful for the submission to the European Commission.
Also supporters of the initiative, who are not Nepalese adoptive parents, are welcome to sign it. They will be listed in the signatures.
Please be fast to submit your signatures, since we are doing our best to send the letters in a few days.
Thus if you want to sign it, please send an email to
adonepal@...
with subject "adhesion"
copying in the text the following sentence, with your data in place of the boldface part:
"I have read the Letter of Request of support for the resumption of International Adoptions in Nepal to be sent to Ian Martin, Special Representative of the
Secretary-General in Nepal of the United Nations And Head of the United Nations Political Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) and to To Mr. E. Lechuga Jimenez
Delegation of the European Commission to Nepal, and I hereby undersign it
Name
Surname
nationality
Please specify if you are a supporter or an adoptive parent. "
Sicerely,
Alessandra
The text follows:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To Mr. Ian Martin
Special Representative of the
Secretary-General in Nepal of the United Nations
And Head of the United Nations Political Mission in Nepal (UNMIN)
To Mr. E. Lechuga Jimenez
Delegation of the European Commission to Nepal
Uttar Dhoka Sadak, Lainchaur
P.O. Box 6754
Kathmandu, Nepal
Subject: Request of support for the resumption of International Adoptions in Nepal
August, 2007
We are a group of the more than 400 families whose files for international adoption in Nepal are at the moment suspended. Many of us have already met their children in Nepal, and we anyway consider them as our sons/daughters since the moment in which they were matched to us. A large number of couples who have already submitted their application for an adoption in Nepal, and are waiting for matching with a child also form part of our group.
The Nepalese government has suspended International Adoptions with the aim of rewriting the present law, because of unfair and obscure procedures that sometimes occur during adoptions in Nepal. The draft of the new law, which should re-establish international adoptions, and be the temporary transit towards a final law on the subject, has been announced many times but has never been approved. The Minister for Children, Women and Social Welfare has still not provided any indication on the content and expected time of approval of the law, and has not given precise indications on the way and time by which the pending files will be processed, which anyway seems to be postponed to the approval of the new terms and conditions.
We feel abandoned and powerless in front of this situation, because of the present absence of news and the lack of a relevant representation in Nepal which may help defend the rights of the more than 400 children already matched and of all their waiting families. We deeply regret that the weakest subjects, that is the children, are obliged to continue to suffer, asking themselves why their adoptive parents do not come to take them away.
However, basic concepts of fairness and due process would be violated if the over 400 pending adoptions were now, at this late stage in the adoption process, subjected to substantially new legal requirements. Furthermore, concerns about the legitimacy of the orphan status of children in regard to any particular pending files can be fully investigated and resolved under the existing legal framework.
Thus we, the undersigned, ask You to consider our request for support, and to intervene with the Nepalese authorities in order to allow the implementation, with a fair processing, of the adoptive procedures already submitted, in due time before elections, and the restarting of International Adoptions in general.
We ask this in particular for the sake of many children which find themselves in poor sanitary and logistic conditions.
A petition with similar requests has already been submitted to the Nepalese Minister for Children, Women and Social Welfare (see Annex 1).
Waiting for a prompt reply,
best regards,
…. Signatures…
Annex 1: Petition to the Minister and Acting Secretary of the Nepali Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare
The Nepali Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare’s current suspension of adoptions in Nepal causes serious negative consequences for both the children and the parents involved in over 440 adoptions that are currently pending in Nepal. These pending adoptions are ones in which the adoptive parents have already been matched with and in many cases have met and formed emotional bonds with their adoptive children.
No new adoptions have been processed or approved in Nepal in about six months and the Ministry has not announced a definite time by which processing of adoptions will be resumed. During this increasingly protracted period of delay, the children continue to live in orphanages, often under inadequate conditions. Developmental and health problems are common among children in orphanages and those problems have been shown to increase with each month of institutional care.
The adoptive parents, too, are harmed by this protracted delay. Many have already spent months and years in their adoption processes, have followed all the existing laws, and are now anguished to have their adoptions put on hold for an indeterminate period.
The suspension of adoptions in Nepal also further burdens the strained governmental and non-governmental social services for children in Nepal. There are tens of thousands of children already living in Nepal’s orphanages. Other children are less fortunate and live as street children, without even the basic care and protection usually provided by orphanages. While the suspension of the adoptions continues, more children are orphaned in Nepal every day due to pervasive conditions of poverty. The suspension denies these children and those already in the orphanage system the opportunity of being adopted by loving families.
The Ministry’s goal to reform adoption laws in Nepal is laudable. It is important that adoption laws in Nepal foster transparency, high standards, and full accountability in order to protect the important rights of the children, birth parents, adoptive parents, and all stakeholders. However, basic concepts of fairness and due process would be violated if the over 440 pending adoptions were now, at this late stage in the adoption process, subjected to substantially new legal requirements. Furthermore, concerns about the legitimacy of the orphan status of children in regard to any particular pending files can be fully investigated and resolved under the existing legal framework.
The timing for the Ministry to end the current suspension of adoptions must be immediate if the adoptions are to be finalized before 2008. In October and November, the Nepali festivals of Dashain and Tijar, as well as the planned national elections in Nepal, will surely slow, if not halt, normal administrative processes. Therefore, if the pending adoptions are not allowed to be processed and completed in advance of these events, even more significant delays and the consequent harms of those delays can be expected.
Given the harms engendered by this protracted delay, we, the undersigned, respectfully request that the Ministry resume the processing of the pending adoptions by no later than August 15, 2007.
2007 Aug 13